Olmecs: Strangers in a Strange Land

A Chinese Exodus to America?

In 1046, Duke Wu of Zhou led 50,000 troops to parlay with
the Shang King’s army at the bloody battle of Muye, which secured the end and
final fall of the Shang Dynasty. The Yin diehards that supported the Shang
Dynasty even after defeat refused to submit to the new King, and mounted a
rebellion for a few years. The rebelliousness of the loyalists lingered on, and
one legend in particular told of a disgruntled Shang Prince named Jizi that
escaped China
with a sizable army. The earliest sources such as the Bamboo annals, which
survived the fires of Emperor Huangdi’s historical revisionist fanaticism, describe
the prince’s flight to a land called Gija Joseon, but does not specify where
that land existed. Later sources gave the location of Joseon as Northwest Korea, but many scholars today debate the
accuracy of that claim and some even contend that it may represent an invention by
the latter Qin emperor. Where did these loyalists really go?

According to diffusionist academics such as Betty J Meggers,
Director of the Latin American Archaeology Program at the prestigious
Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C., a “Shang stimulus” kickstarted the Olmecs in the
Central American Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Guatemala
and the Tabasco state of Mexico. In
1975, Meggers published a controversial paper in the American Anthropologist,
entitled “The Transpacific Origin of Mesoamerican Civilization” and compared
many aspects of Shang Chinese characters and religious beliefs with that of the
Olmecs. Meggers specifically points to the similarities between the Olmecs and
Shang in writing styles, use of batons as symbols of rank, settlement patterns,
architectural styles, long-range acquisition of luxury goods, the esteemed use
and long-distance trade in jade, feline deities, and cranial deformation.

Below, note the similarities in sculpture between the Olmec fish vessel on left with Longshan Chinese fish vessel right.

"When China Ruled the Seas"

Louise Levathes, a staff
writer that wrote for National Geographic
for ten years, now writing for The New York Times,
The Washington Post, and other
publications, also supported the idea of Chinese diffusionism in ancient America in her
book, “When China Ruled the Seas”. She makes the argument that the Shang
Chinese sailed to the Americas
at least by 1000 BC. Levathes also describes the massive ocean-going exploits
of Emperor Zhu Di of the Ming dynasty who assigned the powerful Eunuch admiral
Zheng He to explore the seas and bring back wealth to China on over
3000 “treasure ships.” Levathes describes the largest ships as being over 400
feet long with nine masts, dwarfing Columbus’
later caravels that landed in the Caribbean.
Emperor Zhu Di, famed for building the Forbidden City in Beijing, also planted
vast orchards of Tung trees to provide oil for sealing the many wooden hulls of
Zheng He’s fleet. In all likelihood, the technical mastery and large-scale of Zheng’s
He's fleet probably represents the pinnacle of many centuries of long development in
engineering and Chinese ingenuity.

The impetus for such fleets apparently came from the
overflowing powerbase of the loyalist imperial eunuchs, a group that often acted
independently and even eclipsed the authority of the Emperor in some instances,
the grand secretaries and the Confucian-scholars that formed the conservative
opposition to liberal expansionist policies outside China. However, since the eunuch’s
did not represent a threat to the emperor due their inability to raise a rival
heir, the eunuchs became especially revered and trusted by the emperors,
who frequently granted them extensive privileges and autonomy over the bureaucrats.

The Chinese historian and philosopher Ray Huang, argues that
the imperial eunuchs in actuality represented the “personal will of the
emperor” and formed the direct opposition to the conservative and alternate
political will of the vast bureaucracy formed by the Confucian elite, a clash
which often resulted in conflicts of opposing “political ideologies.” Levathes
shows how this political “showdown” finally ended with Confucian triumph and
the dismantling and shutting down of the navy trade network, resulting in the
now familiar and famous xenophobic distrust amongst Chinese of foreign trade
and influence, a fear which has only just begun to diminish in recent years.

Olmec figurine, without genitalia. A Shang Chinese eunuch of the Imperial court?

Could these powerful eunuchs be responsible for colonizing
and establishing part of the Olmec presence in Mesoamerica?
By the Ming dynasty, over 70,000 eunuchs worked in the imperial court, and records
of eunuch service go back to at least the Shang dynasty. In fact, the records
show that many prisoners of war, upon being conquered by the Shang kings were
castrated and recruited into imperial service. Why would the Shang seek to
settle and trade in Mesoamerica though?

Isthumus of Tehuantepec: Crossroads of Ancient America

The heartland of the Olmec, which is called the Metropolitan
Olman by many scholars, consists of the narrowest land area of Mexico, an area
extremely important for ocean-to-ocean trade routes. In 1853, the Gadsen
Purchase contained one provision allowing the U.S.
special rites to transport mail and trade goods via the Isthmus
of Tehuantepec by plank road and railway. The 1859 McLane-Ocampo
Treaty, signed by Benito Jaurez but never ratified by the U.S. Congress, would
have given the U.S.
extensive transit rights along the same route. The rail project was eventually
contracted out to the British in 1888. The importance of the region for
commercial trade in the modern era demonstrates just how politically important
the land represented, and thus could have been just as equally important back
in ancient times for the same reasons.

Compare the bronze-ware wavy and curvy designs on the Shang dynasty pot below with the Mayan depiction of the Vision Serpent of Kukulkan present on Lintel 15 at Yaxchilan , a city very close to the Olman metropolitan region, which incidentally in Mayan means "Green Stones", the color of imperial jade so praised by the Olmecs and the Chinese. The curvy designs of the smoke and the serpent's body appear remarkably similar to common Shang motifs. In Chinese myth, the curvy and wavy nature of the dragon's serpentine-like body, often depicted forming out of clouds, represented the symbolic astral vehicle allowing a Chinese "magician" or shaman to ascend into heaven. Many scholars agree that a group of elite shamans ruled the Olmec.

Ignacio Bernal elaborates on the special geographic features of the
Isthmus that attracted outside interest in the region in his
quintessential book on the Olmec called, “The Olmec World”. Bernal writes, “both
physical anthropologists and linguists suggest, in that area and period, the
probable coexistence of two or more different groups. This situation may be due
to geography, since the Isthmus of Tehuantepec
was a bottleneck in which the groups that passed through or established
themselves were forced to mix.”

An
Olmec stone statue. The Headdress is strongly reminiscent of the iconic
pleated Nemes headdress of Egyptian Pharaohs, which the Phoenicians are
known to have copied as well.

In fact, the relative ease in crossing the narrow land
mass over to the opposite ocean to trade with Old World cultures such as New
Kingdom Egypt
via Phoenician sailors would have made the Isthmus the veritable trade
“crossroads” of the world.

Bernal also mentions the strange lack of genitalia in Olmec
sculptures…“although the latter were almost always masculine the genital organs
were never carved, even though the figure was usually nude. I do not believe
this to be the result of modesty; perhaps it had something to do with the
curious insistence in Olmec art in representing pathological human figures.
Perhaps the figures are of eunuchs.” Are these the sea-faring Chinese eunuchs of
the Shang dynasty?

Left nephrite jade mask of the Longshan culture of China. The right an Olmec mask. Note similar wide nose and ear gauges.

One of Betty Megger’s most prominent students, Vincent H.
Malmstrom, in a monograph entitled “Izapa: Cultural Hearth of the Olmecs”,
suggests that Izapa represented the occupation of a vital Olmec transpacific
port along the pacific coast. Malmstrom writes, “…in 1973, Coe discovered a
small bar of polished hematite at San Lorenzo
that he assumed may have been used as part of a compass. Found in a layer dated
to approximately 1000 B.C., this suggests that the Olmecs were aware of magnetism
about a millennium before the Chinese (Carlson, 1975, 753). However, during
field work at Izapa in January, 1975, the author discovered evidence that the
inhabitants of this site not only knew about magnetism but that they also seem
to have associated it with the homing instinct in the sea-turtle. Such a
conclusion stems from the fact that a large sculpture of a turtle head, located
about thirty meters to the southeast of the main pyramid, has been carved from a
basaltic boulder rich in magnetic iron and executed with such precision that
all the magnetic lines of force come to focus in the turtle’s snout. Although
no other magnetic stones have been found at Izapa, there are at least two other
representations of the turtle present at the site.

“One of these is a sculpture near the east wall of the main
pyramid which, when filled with water during the rainy season, may have
provided a frictionless surface on which to float a needle or sliver of
lodestone. The other is a large altar in the form of a turtle at the west end
of the ceremonial ball court, in whose north wall is embedded a carving of a
bearded man standing in a boat moving across the waves. That the Izapans were a
sea-faring people and maintained relatively regular contacts with places as far
distant as Ecuador over a long period of time has been shown by the
similarities in ceramics found in the two areas (Coe, 1966, 45; Badner, 1972,
24)…In any event, it would appear that Izapa served as a major center of
cultural innovation in Mesoamerica, whether as a trans-Pacific bridgehead or as
a hearth in its own right.”

The fact that the Olmecs were capable of using magnetic
compasses, and depicted a foreign bearded man sailing on the sea on a stone
stele, suggests an advanced knowledge in sea navigation among the Olmec, which
in all likelihood, either came from the Chinese, or was developed by both
cultures out of a mutual need for trading valuable and exotic goods.

Left, an Olmec jaguar shaman figurine. Middle, a Shang Chinese feline, or tiger figurine, and right another Shang Tiger figurine. Note the same characteristic kneeling posture of all three.

A Certain Love of Jade

Mathew Stirling, one of the original head excavators of the
Olmec digs in the Tabasco
region, compares the finely crafted Jade pieces of the Olmec with Chinese ones. “…The olmecs
loved jade, and in the hands of their artists it was shaped to suit their ends.
With apparent disregard for the difficulties involved, the tough material was
mastered as though it were plastic. This is in high contrast to most later
American jade products, where obvious concessions were made to the original
form of the material and the finished products usually had a rigidity not
present in Olmec art. In this respect Olmec jades rival the finest Chinese
pieces.”

Yet, as Stirling points out, the variety in jades seems to
suggest several different sources, even though only one official source in the
whole of Mesoamerica has been identified in Guatemala. Stirling adds, “True
imperial jade [sculpture] was found at La Venta for the first time in the New
World, heretofore being known only from Burma. Imperial jade does not occur
in large masses.”

Many scholars studying the origins of the Olmec agree that
the sudden arrival of the Olmec sophistication to the region is wholly unexplainable.
Charles R. Wicke is noted as saying, “The monuments of San
Lorenzo [representing the earliest settlement and the most
advanced sculptures of the culture] show a sophistication that suggests long
development. Yet nothing leading up to them has been found in the Gulf area.
Given the relatively thorough investigations that we have described for the
region, this is remarkable. I believe, therefore, that the origins must be
sought elsewhere.”

Shang Writing on American Stones

In a US News & World Report story published November 4,
1996, the article reported the testimony of a Chinese language scholar named
Han Ping Chen examining famous Olmec figures that accompanied jade celts from
La Venta, Tabasco,
now at the National Museum of Anthropology. Chen carefully analyzed the writing
on the celts and concluded that the writings are “Clearly…Chinese Characters.”

The article further commented on the unusual oriental facial
features of many Olmec sculptures: “Migrations from Asia
over the land bridge 10,000 – 15,000 years ago could account for Chinese
features, such as slanted eyes, but not for the stylized mouths and postures
peculiar to sophisticated Chinese art that emerged in recent millennia.

“[Chen] emerged from the exhibit with a theory. After the
Shang army was routed and the emperor killed, he suggested, some loyalists
might have sailed down the Yellow River and
taken to the ocean. There, perhaps, they drifted with a current which skirts Japan’s coast, heads for California
and peters out near Ecuador.
Betty Meggers, a senior Smithsonian archaeologist who has linked Ecuadorian
pottery to 5,000 year old ship wrecked Japanese pottery, says such an idea is
‘plausible’ because ancient Asian mariners were far more proficient than given
credit for…When Prof. Mike Xu, a professor of Chinese history at the University
of Central Oklahoma, traveled to Beijing to ask Chen to examine his index of
146 markings from pre-Columbian objects, Chen refused, saying he had no
interest in anything outside China. He relented only after a colleague familiar
with Xu’s work insisted that Chen, as China’s leading authority [on Shang
script], take a look. He did and found that all but three of Xu’s markings
could have come from China.

“Xu was at Chen’s side in the National Gallery when the
Shang scholar read the text on the Olmec celt in Chinese and translated: ‘The
ruler and his chieftains establish the foundation for a kingdom.’” In response
to Xu and Chen’s findings, Betty Meggers is quoted as saying, “Writing systems
are too arbitrary and complex. They cannot be independently reinvented.” The fact that someone of Megger's caliber is willing to risk professional suicide supporting the argument for transpacific contact between Shang China and Olmec America should certainly put the idea on grounds for serious consideration.